Internet in garage?

[D KRAGER]

Looking to put internet in the garage. Have a pole building that is about 50' from the house. Worried that wireless signal won't pentrate the metal building. I could run a cable, but that would require some trenching. Wondering what you guys have for a setup???

 

[6768rogues]

Borrow a laptop that uses a wireless connection and try it in the garage. You can buy a more powerful wireless router, if necessary. There might be a way to rig up an antenna on the exterior of the garage if the signal will not penetrate it.

 

[cw_racefan]

I'm about 50 ft, but with a stick built garage and vinyl siding. I use whatever wireless router Verizon sent me, but use a Dlink antenna in the garage and get reception no problem. Antenna was like $20. The little antenna on my wireless card wouldn't pick up the signal.

 

[mhoffm911]

For $70, I would give one of these a shot before I started digging dirt:

Hawking Technology - Hi-Gain Wi-Fi Signal Booster

http://www.bestbuy.com/site/olspage...oster&lp=1&type=product&cp=1&id=1184369369314

 

[autoist]

Wife's refrigerator & freezer that are in the pantry block my wireless signal so I hardwired from my wireless router to the computer in the garage.

 

[1fastvx]

Just a warning to anyone that has a cat 5/6 cable running from the house to the garage. Anytime they are outside they could possible pick up a lightning charge basically destroying anything it is connected to. I have seen this happen a number of times. You can run Cat 5/6 outside, but you need to use lightning arrestors on each end to be safe. Or the better thing to do is run fiber optic cable with media converters on each end which convert the signal from Cat 5/6 to fiber and then back to cable on the other end. Completely eliminating and chance of issues from the cable.

John

 

[1fastvx]

10/100 Base-T CAT5 Lightning Surge Protector

http://www.hyperlinktech.com/web/al-cat5vw.php

John

 

[hevnbnd]

ok something I know a little bit about.... I just got my shop with a little over 4000Sqft and not finished anywhere so i have a lot to learn from everyone here... But I have setup internet at serveral metal church buildings and shops for customers. You need one of these. http://www.netgear.com/Products/APsWirelessControllers/AntennasandCables/ANT24D18v2.aspx on the shop and one of these in the house. http://www.netgear.com/Products/APsWirelessControllers/AccessPoints/WG102.aspx that will do it up right. You can try spending more money and time on home routers but this setup will work everytime. It has range in miles with a clear line of sight. Finally I could contribute...

 

[Blown71X]

I have fiber optics between my shop and house, Wireless just wouldn`t cut it even with directional antennas at both ends and to tell the truth was not reliable enough to support my server which is in the shop (too noisey for the house) I was not willing to run copper between the two due to the difference in ground potiential between the buildings (service transformers are a considerable distance apart) I also have multiple video feeds going both ways along with the ethernet and couldn`t be happier, it took a little bit to learn to do the connectors but it isn`t that hard, You can get everything you need with a little searching on ebay.

If you decide on copper, as was stated above absolutely install arresters....even a somewhat close "hit" will wipe out your stuff quicker than you can blink.

Rick

 

[Tman]

ok something I know a little bit about.... I just got my shop with a little over 4000Sqft and not finished anywhere so i have a lot to learn from everyone here... But I have setup internet at serveral metal church buildings and shops for customers. You need one of these. http://www.netgear.com/Products/APsWirelessControllers/AntennasandCables/ANT24D18v2.aspx on the shop and one of these in the house. http://www.netgear.com/Products/APsWirelessControllers/AccessPoints/WG102.aspx that will do it up right. You can try spending more money and time on home routers but this setup will work everytime. It has range in miles with a clear line of sight. Finally I could contribute...

Man, i hope that is better than the Netgear router I have!Thing is a POS!

Here is my happy part of the post, while we were building our shop we lived in the 5th wheel. We are 300-600yards from any house. My mac pulled in a signal many nights. Saved me from going insane living in the camper.......gotta thank whatever neighbor that was, and ask him what routerr he was using!

 

[Scott Cypher]

My pole barn, with aluminum foil insulation, metal roof & ceiling, metal walls, is about 100' from the house, and the signal was real weak. I got one of the Hawking USB antenna network adapters you can get at Best Buy, hung it from the ceiling and it raised the signal strength from <5 to ~24, which is enough to maintain a link. Hawking also has a directional antenna network adapter in stock, too, as one of the other members stated.

But as the others said, the best thing to try is take a laptop in the farthest point behind the most metal, and see what the signal strength is like. It doesn't take much to connect; it just may affect the speed from time to time. Outside weather may weaken it as well; I notice when it rains heavy the signal strength is down.

For what its worth
-Scott

 

[Fueler]

My shop is next door to the home. I mounted the dishes to the southern face of the building. From there the wires run to a junction box inside. From there I ran underground plastic piping to the home through the basement. Ran enough lines to cover the TV boxes I now have and a couple of extra for future.

Same deal in the shop. The internet comes to the same big junction box and then to a router. From the router a cable was run through the pipe to the home and a wireless node at that end. Same for the shop. It's wireless. I have 4 different computers in here for different uses and so far no issues with the wireless.

I did the buried cable in the pipe thing because at the time no one seemed sure if I could get a total wireless thing to work...and I had to run the TV lines anyway. Kind of glad I did because I can see here in the shop that the one hard lined computer is quicker on the net than the wireless ones but that makes sense.

I will look into that lightening arrestor mentioned. First I have heard of it. Did buy one of those whole house surge suppressors to add to the electrical panel. While I wired in a couple of separate computer circuits in the shop I bought one for shop also.

The shop looks like the starship enterprises with 3 dishes hanging off of it.

 

[D KRAGER]

Thanks for the different ideas.

I'm taking home the wireless router from work and the laptop to try out tommorrow...
I'm thinking that I could put the router close to the window facing the garage, and if I have to I can put an external antenna in the window on the garage facing the house. Hopefully that will do it.

 

[DynoDave]

10/100 Base-T CAT5 Lightning Surge Protector

http://www.hyperlinktech.com/web/al-cat5vw.php

John

I have one of these on the back of the house...never knew what it was for! Thanks John!

 

[1fastvx]

Do you have a detached space that cabling is ran to? If so there should be one of those on both ends.

John

I have one of these on the back of the house...never knew what it was for! Thanks John!

 

[D KRAGER]

Well took the router and computer home over the weekend..... If the router is in the window facing the garage, and the laptop is close to the window in the garage, it will pick up the signal.... Could run a external antenna and set it in the window from the desktop computer i guess.

Anyone have any success with high gain antennas on the router? How much will that help? Other thing i could do I guess is put a repeater in the garage window.

 

[1fastvx]

All that work to get a wireless signal. Do yourself a big favor and run a hard cable to the garage. In the long run it will be way better. Trust me I do computer work for a living. Wireless still is not a replacement for wired networking!

John

Well took the router and computer home over the weekend..... If the router is in the window facing the garage, and the laptop is close to the window in the garage, it will pick up the signal.... Could run a external antenna and set it in the window from the desktop computer i guess.

Anyone have any success with high gain antennas on the router? How much will that help? Other thing i could do I guess is put a repeater in the garage window.

 

[D KRAGER]

Yea it's gonna be cheaper to run the hard wire...... Just a little digging.......

 

[Fueler]

Do what I did with the cabling. Just don't bury the cable by iteself. I ran a sealed plastic pipe big enough to run several wires. If you haven't thought about it you might as well pull some wire for the TV and/or phones while you are at it. PS, as 1fastvx will probably tell you the cable is a faster transmission speed than the wireless.

 

[rancherbill]

Simple !

Get a piece of Coax cable and mount you antenna on the outside of the building.

Just use cable TV type cable between the router and the actual little antenna. Once you are out of the building there will be no problem.

 

[D KRAGER]

Yea I'll probably run at least a 1" conduit. So in the future I can pull additional wires for whatever. Should have done this when I built it and ran the water and power, but you get busy and don't think about it......

Don't have a home phone anymore... waste of money. ALready have a satellite on the garage so don't need a tv feed, but you never know......


? for Rancherbill: Have you done this with just coax (rg6) ? I've been told you have to use fancy expensive low loss cable......

I've been thinking about the speed issue also.... I have all my mp3 music downloaded on the computer in the garage for parties and such. So if I do hard wire (cat5) it would be more dependable if I map a network drive to access the music in the house. Can't go wrong with 100mps with the wire verses 54 mps max with wireless. Ground is pretty soggy right now after all the snow melted, I could probably just spade the mud to the side and wouldn't have to dig as much.

 

[1fastvx]

Using standard coax wont work. The pigtails from the antenna need to be real short. Thats why you see the weather proof boxes to mount the wireless access points into. They put them right on the mast close to the antenna and then power them with POE (power over ethernet).

John

Simple !

Get a piece of Coax cable and mount you antenna on the outside of the building.

Just use cable TV type cable between the router and the actual little antenna. Once you are out of the building there will be no problem.

 

[1fastvx]

Hardwire is the way to go for sure! I would run some cat6 from building to building. Just make sure you get the surge boxes for each end. Also to add you can run 100mbit right now and upgrade to 1000mbit over the same cable later. Sharing of anything over the network would be way superior to any wireless setup. You will never get any signal drops or any inteference from the neighbors microwave turning on.

John

Yea I'll probably run at least a 1" conduit. So in the future I can pull additional wires for whatever. Should have done this when I built it and ran the water and power, but you get busy and don't think about it......

Don't have a home phone anymore... waste of money. ALready have a satellite on the garage so don't need a tv feed, but you never know......


? for Rancherbill: Have you done this with just coax (rg6) ? I've been told you have to use fancy expensive low loss cable......

I've been thinking about the speed issue also.... I have all my mp3 music downloaded on the computer in the garage for parties and such. So if I do hard wire (cat5) it would be more dependable if I map a network drive to access the music in the house. Can't go wrong with 100mps with the wire verses 54 mps max with wireless. Ground is pretty soggy right now after all the snow melted, I could probably just spade the mud to the side and wouldn't have to dig as much.

 

[rancherbill]

Using standard coax wont work. The pigtails from the antenna need to be real short. Thats why you see the weather proof boxes to mount the wireless access points into. They put them right on the mast close to the antenna and then power them with POE (power over ethernet).

John

You are right if you are going for miles.


For the short distance that we are talking about, signal loss, is not a huge issue.

It's not that big a deal to mount the router near a wall, add 6 or feet of coax to get outside the wall.

 

[BigDamnCountry]

ok something I know a little bit about.... I just got my shop with a little over 4000Sqft and not finished anywhere so i have a lot to learn from everyone here... But I have setup internet at serveral metal church buildings and shops for customers. You need one of these. http://www.netgear.com/Products/APsWirelessControllers/AntennasandCables/ANT24D18v2.aspx on the shop and one of these in the house. http://www.netgear.com/Products/APsWirelessControllers/AccessPoints/WG102.aspx that will do it up right. You can try spending more money and time on home routers but this setup will work everytime. It has range in miles with a clear line of sight. Finally I could contribute...

Hi hevnbnd, I have satelite internet in my home and I want to run it to my shop, which is about 300 yards away. What do I need?

 

[D KRAGER]

Ok here's how I ended up doing it....... I have a desktop computer setup in the garage now. I put a wireless card into the computer, then attached a yagi antenna to the card and aimed it out the window towards the house at the router. Check ebay for deals on all this stuff, but I got it all for free. Speednet has their equipment on top on our grain elevator at work. The yagi and card was older technology that they used to give us our internet in the office. Now they have newer equipment and they never bothered removing the old stuff. SO.... I made good use of it.

I'm also helping a buddy beam his internet 1500' across the pasture from the house to the shop at the farm. Setup with yagi antenna's on each end facing each other. We still have to do some other changes but we had it working good the other night. Best thing to do is get yagi antenna's off ebay that have third party firmware on them. (dd-wrt) This firmware lets you crank up the power of the router (we used linksys). (don't get v8, they don't have removable antennas) The firmware also lets you set the recieving router as a repeater or repeater bridge to distribute the signal to the shop. Pretty neat stuff, i've been playing with this stuff the past couple weeks.

 

[D KRAGER]

BIgdamcountry.... If it's 300 yrds, a router with high gain antenna's in the house and a good recieving antenna in the garage might work if you have both setup in windows, but you might be better off with the yagi antenna's on each end. They have kits on ebay....linksys wrt54g with yagi antenna (you would need one on each end) $300 should do it for sure. THere might be a cheaper way, but this way is the cadilac.